Autogate outage affecting foreigners at Johor Bahru land checkpoint remains unresolved: Malaysia’s border agency

JOHOR BAHRU: An autogate outage affecting foreign travellers at the Bangunan Sultan Iskandar Customs, Immigration and Quarantine Complex (BSI) in Johor Bahru since Saturday (Jan 10) has yet to be resolved, Malaysia’s Border Control and Protection Agency (AKPS) said on Sunday.

“The eGate system disruption is still recurring and the operational status remains unchanged, involving foreign passport holders only,” AKPS’ BSI branch said in a Facebook post at 11.40am.

The agency advised foreign travellers to use the National Integrated Immigration System (myNIISe) application or proceed through manual counters to reduce congestion.

“The Malaysian Immigration Department, together with AKPS, are still actively carrying out repair works and continuous monitoring to address this issue,” AKPS said in its post.

The agency did not specify the cause of the disruption.

Tens of thousands of foreign travellers faced queues of up to two hours at BSI and the Second Link land checkpoint on Saturday after most e-gates failed amid the weekend traffic, according to local media reports.

AKPS issued a similar statement on Saturday, flagging technical difficulties with the BSI autogates involving foreign passport holders while clarifying that Malaysian citizens can continue using the e-gates.

Since June 2024, visitors from 63 countries and regions have been able to use Malaysia’s autogate facilities for immigration clearance. These include travellers from Singapore, Japan and Australia.

In July last year, Malaysia similarly faced an autogate breakdown affecting foreign travellers at its major immigration checkpoints. The two-day breakdown affected over 380,000 travellers at BSI, local media reported.

In December 2024, hundreds of travellers were stranded for several hours after the autogate and QR code scanning system at the BSI suffered a malfunction.